The great American linguist and activist Noam Chomsky condemns in the strongest terms the illegal occupation of Ukraine, which he likens to the US war against Iraq or the invasion of Poland by Hitler and Stalin.
At the same time, the now ninety-year-old intellectual warns that if it is not stopped in time and does not appear to be the intention of the parties, the consequences for the world will be dire: tens of millions of people suffer from famine in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Chomsky explains to political scientist CJ Polychroniou in “Truthout” that a second threat is a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia.
Washington has decided to send the latest generation of anti-ship missiles to Ukraine. The Ukrainians have already sunk the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet and we will see what the Kremlin’s reaction will be if more ships are sunk.
Moscow has so far refrained from attacking NATO’s supply lines used to send heavy weapons to Ukraine, but if it does, it will mean a direct confrontation with the United States.
Some are also proposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine, which is taboo for Moscow, and so far the Pentagon has known how to resist those who demand it, but how long will this resistance last? Chomsky wonders.
Not to mention the negative impact of war on climate change, which will undoubtedly accelerate. Before the war, some measures were taken to prevent disaster, but now the opposite is happening.
The International Panel on Climate Change warns that immediately reducing fossil fuel consumption will be necessary if humanity is to survive, but President Joe Biden has announced, on the contrary, the expansion of hydrocarbon production.
For Chomsky, this is pure “political theatre”, as it has nothing to do with inflation or fuel prices. In fact, oil will take years to reach the market, years better spent promoting renewable energies, something that is rarely talked about lately.
All this makes it absolutely necessary, according to the author of “Who rules the world?” and many other essential books put an immediate end to the “Ukrainian tragedy”.
However, this is only possible if there is a diplomatic agreement or if one of the parties to the conflict surrenders, explains Chomsky, which equates to prolonging the war and with it the destruction of Ukraine as well as the death toll.
A diplomatic deal, his preferred solution, means that each party accepts it as “tolerable” but requires, in the case of Russia, to offer some sort of way out to its president and the principal responsible for the war.
Some see Putin as a criminally insane man, but for others, like Harvard University foreign policy expert Graham Allison, he’s still a “smart actor”. On the other hand, if he wasn’t, there would be no point in arguing with him because he could blow up the world at any moment.
Opposing or trying to delay a diplomatic solution for as long as possible means advocating a protracted and bloody war with unforeseen consequences, and Chomsky says this should be obvious to everyone, even in “the current hysterical climate.”
To advocate the continuation of the war in order to shed the blood of Russia, as in the USSR in its war in Afghanistan, is to him risking an experiment as dangerous as it is terrifying.
France, Germany and Italy have called for a diplomatic agreement to be negotiated, but the “two most warmongering states in the West”, the United States and the United Kingdom, oppose it and argue that the war must continue.
A prominent defender of the Palestinian cause, Chomsky also denounces the hypocrisy of the West when it is said that helping a brutally occupied people like the Ukrainians is necessary.
So why not give the Palestinians weapons to defend themselves after half a century of Israeli occupation in blatant violation of international law?
He declares that he is in favor of re-establishing the gun control regime that has been effectively dismantled by Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Fortunately, says Chomsky, Democrat Joe Biden has managed to save the last remnant of that time, the New START (Strategic Arms Treaty), to the extreme.